The small trap was built by CRYPTOPERVERTS during the NADIR OF HUMAN-SASQUATCH RELATIONS known to the Humans as the "SEVENTIES"!!! FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD HOWL, their scheme was to TRAP AND KIDNAP SASQUATCH CUBS in order to CURRY FAVOR with some strange Human named NIMOY!!! Cubs were to be lured in through the TINY DOORWAY with a tasty smelling carcass only to have THE DOOR SLAM SHUT BEHIND THEM while an electric signal alerted a nearby CRYPTOPERVERT HIDEOUT!!!

No cubs were ever kidnapped using the trap, but it's STILL AN ATTRACTIVE NUISANCE!!! Even though it's FLIMSILY CONSTRUCTED, smaller cubs might injure themselves while SMASHING THROUGH THE WALLS!!! Not to mention there might be CRYPTOPERVERTS nearby looking to GAZE SEXUALLY!!! Make sure you howl to your cubs about the dangers of GOOD SMELLIN' EATS in strange Human buildings!

HUMAN LYLE: You are wrong about the GIANT FOREST OCTOPUS being a myth! I HAVE SEEN IT MYSELF!!! Other Sasquatch howl that I am crazy but I KNOW WHAT I SAW!!! I was walking through the forest one night ENGAGED IN PRIVATE SASQUATCH BUSINESS THAT IS OF NO CONCERN TO NOSEY CRYPTOZOOLOGISTS when I heard the DEEP CLACKING OF A BEAK in the distance and smelled a STRONG ODOR OF AMMONIA on the wind! Then all of the sudden A GIANT ARM AS THICK AS A LOG WITH A THOUSAND SUCTION CUPS lunged out of the dense trees towards me! Although it was dark I was able to find a nearby boulder to defend myself! I SMASHED THE ARM BEFORE IT COULD GRAB ME!!! There was a GURGLING SCREECH in the distance and the arm started to retract back into the trees! Before it could get away I took a bite out of it! IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!

SILLY LOOKING HUMAN WITH STRANGE FIXATION ON MONO RAIL: Vanara would never build a mono rail! WHAT SORT OF FUNGUS HAVE YOU BEEN GATHERING?! Vanara are proud Hominoids like Sasquatch! If you ordered Sasquatch to build you a mono rail WE WOULD CRUSH EVERY ONE OF YOUR BONES and howl at your floppy corpse: "THERE'S YOUR MONO RAIL!!!" Vanara would do the same, I am sure! Anyway, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, what Cascadia needs is a SYSTEM OF GONDOLAS traversing the forest canopy! THIS WOULD MAKE IT MUCH EASIER TO GATHER TREE OCTOPUS!!!

TYPING OCTOPUS: I know you are using one of our Hominoidnet kiosks... IF I FIND YOU I WILL EAT YOU!!!

Please allow me to direct your attention to evidence of tree octopuses in New England. Of course, this is unverified, so it may just be a red herring. Or it may be the remains of a PNWTO brought back by one of those venturesome New England sea captains of old.

New England tree octopuses, such as the Sugar Octopus, are not unknown, but none achieve anywhere near the size shown in those pictures. While there have long been rumors of giant forest octopuses in Cascadia, these have never been verified by serious cephalopodologists and are generally agreed to be the product of the over-active imaginations of hungry Sasquatch out gathering normal-sized tree octopuses.

I'm afraid that that giant "tree octopus" (much like the Cardiff giant) is a fraud -- most likely created by cryptozoologists to lure gullible Sasquatch to New England -- and not an actual petrified terrestrial octopod.

The Tamil Nadu Government today announced it will implement the Monorail Rapid Transport System to reduce traffic congestion in Chennai city, making it the first in the country to have such a system.

Congratulations, and welcome to the Future! The concept of the Monorail, still largely unfamiliar to most Indians, was explained to Chennaites by News Today:

Monorail, the single-track upraised train service, is popular in many advanced countries (Japan, Malaysia, Australia, USA, to name a few).

This charmingly naïve tautology -- for to be advanced necessarily means embracing the monorail -- shows that India is finally awakening herself to Monorail Consciousness. And sure enough that consciousness will spread as two billion eyes open to the possibilities of the monorail; ND also reports that West Bengal, Karnataka, and Punjab are expected to follow Chennai's bold lead.

What effect will this have on tensions between India and Pakistan, who are planning their own monorail in Lahore? Will a common monorailular cause -- tying together the subcontinent in a glorious ribbon of unity made, and made of, concrete -- bring these two bitter adversaries together? I am certain the monorail holds forth to mankind the prospect for global unification -- uniting the divergent rails of social discord into one common path of agreeance -- and this could be the beginning.

But what of us? What of Seattle and the rest of Cascadia? Are we to outsource the Monorail Revolution? Will we be left below, to fend for ourselves on the cold, unforgiving streets, molested by biker gangs unguided by the rails of law and surrounded by the accumulating detritus of our failed technologies as India and others pass over us in luxurious comfort into humanity's destiny? We must not let this be our fate! We must get back on track! A dream derailed is a dream denied!

With Seattle going on it's 25th consecutive day of rain, could this not be a sign that we have disembarked at the wrong station? Need I point out that monorails, held high aloft the lapping waves of the flooded streets, are not hampered by such deluges?

While my primary concern is with the Elevationment of Humanity, this setback has affected me personally. The closure of the Seattle Monorail following that suspicious accident -- I suspect there is more going on than just pilot error and that Mr. Zapato has information he is withholding -- has left me stranded in my apartment since November.

Unable to reach the West Lake Center food court, I am living off of canned goods and what meager scraps I can come by. I would order take-out, but the local delivery boys have black-listed me since I mocked their primitive automobiles and bicycles. My neighbors have suggested I use the busses, but that is not an option. Once one has been elevated on a concrete beam of hope high enough to touch the very robe-hems of the Gods, one cannot -- no, will not! -- go back to those debased forms of transportation which one had transcended.

I have faith that the monorail will one day run again, but the situation seems as if it will only get worse before it will get better. Please, send fresh supplies and monorail technicians!

There was a story on Evening Magazine last night about "The Northwest's 10 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries". Besides yet again bringing up D.B. Cooper -- whom you should all just forget you ever heard about -- it had one topical mystery I had somehow missed: the details surrounding a prototype monorail built on the Tacoma tideflats in 1910 or 1911.

Monorail apologists are claiming that the accident was the fault of pilot error resulting from a 1988 track redesign intended to allow the monorail to dock at the then-new Westlake Center mall, and not caused by design flaws inherent in monorailular transportation.

But I disagree. Having a vehicle straddling a thin track (as opposed to, say, traveling safely inside a tube) increases the possibility for miscalculations in the inter-track distance necessary for bi-directional train clearance. It also invites planners into thinking they can get away with tracks too close together if they just institute passing protocols -- protocols which will eventually fail, as appears to be the current case. Clearly, monorails lead to sloppy engineering, which will lead to mass slaughter.

"It's an accident waiting to happen. Those tracks are too close together," said a man carrying a pet ferret.

Innocent, if overly obvious, observation from a man out walking his weasel or something more sinister? I reported previously on the Monorail-Paraterrestrial connection in Las Vegas. Now it seems that the Seattle Monorail collision has attracted even less savory paraterrestrial attention. It's highly likely that the above ferret owner is actually under the control of Ferretoids.

The Ferretoids -- pseudomammalian paraterrestrials from chilly Planet X somewhere in the Oort Cloud who operate on Earth from underground bases in Antarctica -- have been remotely infiltrating Seattle for over a decade via Starbucks franchises, which they use as fronts to infect would-be sycophants with mind-controlling brainworms that feed off of alkaloids found in coffee, particularly caffeine, to nurish their biopsychotronic organs. It is through these psychosycophants that the Ferretoids try to influence Earth affairs, since the planet is much too warm for them to venture out on their own.

The Ferretoids have long been trying to sabotage the activities of other paraterrestrials on Earth, not necessarily with any goal in mind, but just because they're a bunch of obnoxious jerks. If they learned that other paraterrestrials were involved in the spread of monorails, it would be entirely in character for them to send a lackey to the crash scene to bad-mouth monorails to the press.

While I agree with the statement about monorails being an accident waiting to happen, I must emphasize that I and Zapato Productions intradimensional are in no way supportive of Ferretoids or their agenda, whatever it may be. The Ferretoids are merely belligerent opportunists and would support monorails if they thought it would be annoying to other paraterrestrials.

This time the Red and Blue monorail trains collided on a turn near Westlake, sending sparks flying and raining down shards of monorail glass on the streets below the track, narrowly missing slicing up innocent holiday shoppers who just want to live their lives in peace, unmolested by monorails. By sheer luck, only two of the 84 passengers sustained physical injuries requiring a trip to the hospital, although emotional scars will no doubt haunt them all for the rest of their lives -- as is the case with most monorail victims.

Passengers reported a loud, metal-on-metal screeching sound and people sliding out of their seats when the trains struck. In a notoriously unwise design decision, monorail trains -- although high-speed and elevated tens of feet off the ground -- are not equipped with seatbelts*. It was fortunate that no passengers flew out of their seats and through the ripped-off sliding door to their deaths on the sidewalk below.

Since the trains are elevated, evacuating all the passengers took over an hour and required fire ladders. If during that time the trains spontaneously combusted like one did last year, who knows how many passengers would have been cinderized in the blaze.

This is just the latest in a slew of recent accidents involving monorails around the world, including ones in Malaysia, California, and Las Vegas. So far no one has been killed, but it is just a matter of time.

* In contrast, ZPi Inteli-Tube pods are fully equipped with seatbelts and airbags. Plus, side collisions are not an issue since pods travel in enclosed tubes, with buffers of compressed air separating the pods before and after.

Mount St. Helens has erupted again. Don't worry, you'll be hearing more than you care to know about it soon enough. When you're watching the live coverage on the news tomorrow with the reporter standing in front of the mountain, you may wonder what it looks like behind the scenes. For a taste, here's a panorama I took of the Media Circus that followed the minor burp last October:

Photo taken October 4, 2004. (Click to enlarge.)

It's kind of hard to see in the scaled down version, but there was a reporter doing a shoot at the time. Here's a close up:

Anyway, the Media was segregated in a lot a few miles away from Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center (the closest, then-open facility to the mountain,) so they wouldn't pester the Normals. A few Media People did manage to escape the paddock and sneak their way to the visitor center though, as I was approached there by a roving reporter from some Canadian radio network soliciting human interest soundbites with a tape recorder. He seemed slightly disappointed when I declined to comment, but luckily the person next to me was chomping at the bit to tell Canadians all about his life-long love of volcanology.

Given the larger scale of the newest eruption, the Media Circus will probably be much larger this time. Then again, since it was only five months since the Media last visited, and especially since nothing blew up when they were there, the novelty may still be worn off. We'll see.

The Fishing Vessel Owners Marine Ways, a Ballard shipyard built in 1919 that still relies on archaic duorail technology, must make way so that our collective destiny can be achieved. While the passing of such a storied industrial site is unfortunate -- as it has served as an important reminder of how far and how fast Humanity has traveled from primordial experiments with transportation beholden to the whims of Nature to the present awakening of the New Age of the Monorail and all the psychohistorical maturity that such a transition implies -- it nonetheless remains necessary. How else to support the monorail span over the Lake Washington Ship Canal than by razing the FVO dry-docks and erecting a pillar in their place? If whole councils of monorail engineers cannot find a solution to this puzzle, can we expect mere ship repairmen to?

The concerns of the FVO, while understandable coming from those still living as if it were the 1910s, are trivial and easily assuaged. Jobs lost can easily be regained in the monorail maintenance and hospitality industries. Even primitive, pre-monorail peoples such as wood-caulkers and keelwrights can by uplifted though an intense program of monorailization and neurolinguistic programming. I've seen it happen before in Malaysia, and I have every confidence that these results can be replicated in Cascadia.

Members of the FVO also allude that the fishing industry will be hurt by the loss of shipyards, but this is short-sighted. Monorail lines will eventually be built over the vast seas, allowing the rich bounties of the deep to be harvested by fleets of fishing monorails. These monomariners will be unaffected by such dated concerns as sea-sickness, capsization, or catastrophic oakum failure and will be free to ply their trade in all the luxurious comforts afforded by modern monorail design. There is simply no need to fear that the flow of fresh halibut will be abated.

In closing, I again call upon FVO President Don Lindblad to cease his attempts to fight the Future -- to put away childish things and embrace our species' evolutionary growth as a monorailfaring people. Take comfort that the fully monorailized World of Tomorrow will have a place for you and your kind; you only need to board the monorail and let it carry you there.